dmunger | January 9, 2007Eric Schwitzgebel has just completed an exhaustive study of the behavior of ethicists. He had noticed that a large number of ethics books seemed to be missing from research libraries across the nation. Rather than leave that observation in anecdotal form, he began a systematic analysis of the data. His initial analysis showed that 1.25 ethics books were missing for every 1 book in non-ethics fields of philosophy. But that still didn't satisfy him. Perhaps ethics books are simply more popular, or perhaps the sample is biased because of the relative age of the ethics versus non-ethics books. So…
dmunger | January 8, 2007Gualtiero Piccinini writes:
I always put my papers online. I used to publish online a penultimate version, under the assumption that since it's not identical to the published version, it's ok. Lately, taking a cue from the copyright form of Australasian Journal of Philosophy, I've started posting the last version sent to the publisher (before proof corrections)
While some authors cross off the relevant portions of agreements before signing, Piccinini signs the publishers' copyright forms as they are. Clearly the practice of posting your articles online violates many of these agreements.…
dmunger | January 8, 2007Jake Mandell, creator of the Tone Deafness Test we discussed on Cognitive Daily, has now posted the results of that study and two others on musical perception:
Effects of musical training:
Subjects who report more years of musical training do better on the musical tests than those who have less musical training. It is impossible to say whether this is a chicken or egg phenomenon: Are people able to improve their performance by studying for more years, or do people who last through several years of musical lessons have greater inherent ability to start with?
Effect of race:
Subjects who…
dmunger | January 7, 2007Here's the Cognitive Daily weekly podcast for January 7. Don't forget that you can subscribe to the podcast using the special RSS feed:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/rss-podcasts.xml
To subscribe using iTunes, select Subscribe to Podcast from the Advanced menu, then paste or type in the URL. (We've had a few problems with the RSS feed, but we're expecting to work these out within the next few days. In the meantime, we apologize for the inconvenience.)
To access the podcast directly, click on the links below:
Cognitive Daily's weekly podcast for January 7, 2007 (AAC version)…
dmunger | January 5, 2007We've been doing a lot of social psychology on Casual Fridays lately, what with gift preferences and email sign-offs. So this week we thought we'd get back to basic perception research. We'll see if we can uncover fundamental perceptual differences with a simple online test. I can't tell you much more about the study with spoiling the results, but this one should be quick and fun, so why not give it a try?
Click here to participate in the study.
As usual, the study is brief, with just 11 quick questions, so it should only take a minute of your time. You have until 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on…
dmunger | January 5, 2007Greta and I will be at the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference two weeks from now at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
An impressive list of bloggers and journalists will be attending, but there are still a few slots left, so if your weekend is still open, you might want to consider joining us. It's a great chance to meet up with dozens of talented scientists and educators from around the world, including ScienceBlogs' own Janet Stemwedel, "Abel Pharmboy", James Hrynyshyn, and Suzanne Franks, as well as journalists from The Lancet, Nature, and American Scientist. You…
dmunger | January 4, 2007This year's collegiate national football championship will be held in Phoenix, Arizona, at the usual home of the Arizona Cardinals. Neither competitor, Florida or Ohio State, is playing on its home field, so in principle the game should be an even match. Indeed, neither team has lost a home game this year, with Florida's lone loss coming at an away game in Auburn.
How big is the home field advantage? In the English Premier Football League (the other football), the home team wins 66 percent of the time. The home field advantage has been attributed to everything from understanding the local…
dmunger | January 4, 2007Here's a fun little item, via Digg:
Squinting reduces the amount of peripheral light coming into the eye so that a greater percentage of light comes from the center of the visual field.
Important note: It's wrong to to say that "'squinting squishes the eyeball slightly to correct for a focus point that misses the mark.' Although the lens does change shape, this is a reflex muscle action that can accompany (but is not the result of) squinting."
In other news:
"Scans show how brains plot the future." Is this article overstating the evidence? You decide.
You knew this was probably true:…
dmunger | January 3, 2007Watch the quick video below. First you'll fixate on a small dot in the middle of the screen. Then you'll get a visual cue which serves to direct your attention to a particular location. Simultaneously, four letter Os, each colored red or green, will appear. Your task is to say, as quickly as possible, the COLOR of the letter in the direction indicated by the cue.
Now try this one, same task, but with a different cue.
Much research on visual attention during the past 30 years has focused on the difference between these two types of cues -- central arrows versus peripheral indicators such as…
dmunger | January 3, 2007
Last summer, we participated in the Donors Choose challenge, which enabled us to help kids learn science by contributing to specific projects to classrooms in need. With help from our readers, we raised over $2,500, and ScienceBlogs as a whole raised over $34,000. Today, we got our thank you!
Sixty ESL science books were sent to a classroom in Sam Houston Middle School in Garland, Texas. Here are some of the kids who got to use them:
We also received dozens of handwritten thank-you letters from the kids themselves! Here's one of my favorites:
Thanks to all who donated. If you missed…
dmunger | January 2, 2007Chris Chatham's Developing Intelligence, one of my favorite CogSci blogs, is now a member of ScienceBlogs! Chris has a sharp mind, and he's always willing to offer thorough, readable accounts of peer-reviewed research. Now you'll be able to get his insights alongside the other great resources for cognitive and neuroscience we have here at ScienceBlogs. You can see all posts on Brain and Behavior using the Brain and Behavior Channel, or visit the blogs individually via the handy listing in the column over at left. But you'll probably want to start with Chris's latest, a great post on fMRI…
dmunger | January 2, 2007I was on the way out the door for a vacation when the journal Nature published its much-anticipated report on the results of its open peer review experiment, but I did want to offer a few comments on the report, even if I'm arriving to the discussion a bit late.
Peer review, of course, is the gold standard for academic publishing. I believe one of the reasons for Cognitive Daily's success is our clear delineation between reports on peer-reviewed research and commentary on news items reported in the popular press (you can always click on the Just the Research tab above to see only reports on…
dmunger | December 31, 2006Here's the Cognitive Daily weekly podcast for December 31 (one day late -- sorry, we're just back from vacation!). Don't forget that you can subscribe to the podcast using the special RSS feed:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/rss-podcasts.xml
To subscribe using iTunes, select Subscribe to Podcast from the Advanced menu, then paste or type in the URL.
To access the podcast directly, click on the links below:
Cognitive Daily's weekly podcast for December 31, 2006 (AAC version)
Cognitive Daily's weekly podcast for December 31, 2006 (MP3 version)
Cognitive Daily's weekly podcast provides…
gmunger | December 28, 2006This is a guest post by Dominic Ippolito, one of my top student writers from Fall of 2006
Everyone knows a "perfectionist." We think of him or her as someone who strives for, and often attains, a high level of performance. But what are the psychological effects of this behavior? Psychologists categorize perfectionists according to two commonly accepted forms. Adaptive ('healthy') perfectionists set high standards for themselves, and use these goals to elicit their best effort. This form of perfectionism, measured by a subscale of the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R), called the High…
gmunger | December 26, 2006This is a guest post by Anna Coon, one of my top student writers from fall 2006
If a baby is placed in a new, strange situation, a common reaction is to look to its mother. For example, whenever I met a new baby I was to babysit, she would always look to her mother at first, as if to get her mother's opinion on the potentially frightening situation. But why, exactly, is the baby looking to its mother? It might be for comfort in a novel situation, but it might also be to receive information. A team led by Trisha Striano has developed a study to test whether babies look to their mothers for…
dmunger | December 23, 2006Here's the Cognitive Daily weekly podcast for December 23. Don't forget that you can subscribe to the podcast using the special RSS feed:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/rss-podcasts.xml
To subscribe using iTunes, select Subscribe to Podcast from the Advanced menu, then paste or type in the URL.
To access the podcast directly, click on the links below:
Cognitive Daily's weekly podcast for December 23, 2006 (AAC version)
Cognitive Daily's weekly podcast for December 23, 2006 (MP3 version)
Cognitive Daily's weekly podcast provides audio versions of each week's CogDaily reports on peer-…
dmunger | December 22, 2006So it's December 22, and you are one of the few people who hasn't already bagged out of work to get ready for the holidays. You've been absolutely deluged -- swamped with work -- the entire month of December. You've hardly had time to think about Christmas, let alone shop. But now, with the holiday just a couple short days away, you're faced with the shocking truth. You'll be attending three different Christmas parties (or whatever alternative you prefer). Gifts will be exchanged. What's an overworked procrastinator to do? Would gift certificates be appropriate? What about cash? Everyone can…
dmunger | December 21, 2006Take a look at these two images. Do they belong in the same category or different categories?
You say the same? Wrong -- they're different! The one on the right is a little blurrier.
What about these two?
These are in the same category. Sure, the one on the right is still blurrier, but now it's rotated a bit, so that puts the two objects back in the same category. My rule for categorizing is complex, involving both blurriness and rotation (I'll explain how it works later on).
How do you think you would do if you were tested on these categories? Do you think you'd do better or worse if…
dmunger | December 20, 2006Fellow ScienceBlogger and SAT-Challenge co-investigator Chad Orzel has been awarded tenure at Union College. Why not head over there and offer him congratulations? Let's see if we can make his the biggest ScienceBlogs discussion thread ever!
Now get to work updating that bio, Chad!
In other news:
Fascinating fMRI study demonstrating that people who were closer to ground zero on 9/11 have different memories. More on "flashbulb memories" here. Key difference: physical proximity to the actual events.
How to keep memory and mental function working as you age.
The Neurocritic wonders if making…
dmunger | December 19, 2006As parents of a 15-year-old, Greta and I are very interested in what causes people to behave aggressively. We know a lot about specific causes of aggression -- violent media, testosterone, guns, and personal insults can all lead to aggressive behavior in certain circumstances. But kids and others exposed to one or more of these things don't necessarily become violent. Sometimes it seems that just the presence of his sister in the room can cause Jim to act more aggressively than he would otherwise.
That's one reason we were intrigued by a recent study by Jennifer Klinesmith, Tim Kasser, and…